Alex Anthopoulos Says He’s No Longer A Candidate For Twins Job

SATURDAY: Anthopoulos has told colleagues that the timing is poor for him to take a top baseball operations job elsewhere, Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press writes. That means he won’t be taking a new job with the Twins. The Dodgers exec recently had his family join him in the Los Angeles area, and his two young children are recently started school.

TUESDAY: Alex Anthopoulos is a “confirmed candidate” to take over the Twins’ soon-to-be-created position of president of baseball operations, Jon Morosi of MLB Network reports on Twitter. He becomes the first potential front office candidate clearly linked to the organization.

Minnesota has reportedly begun a search to add both a PBOp as well as a general manager, adopting some form of the two-tiered front office structure that has become popular around the league. The team has been relying upon Rob Antony as interim GM after parting ways with Terry Ryan earlier this year.

The 39-year-old Anthopoulos is best known for his turn as the GM of the Blue Jays from late 2009 through 2015. After putting together a postseason club last year — the organization’s first berth 1993 — he ended up parting ways with the club in a surprising series of events.

Toronto hired Mark Shapiro as president, reportedly promising him final authority over baseball decisionmaking. While the Jays attempted to retain Anthopoulos, offering him a five-year deal that he could have opted out of after a single season, he declined to continue with the new leadership and somewhat-altered parameters of his role.

Since that time, Anthopoulos has been working for the Dodgers as a Vice President, joining several other prominent former top baseball operations personnel in the Los Angeles front office. At the time of his hiring, Anthopoulos expressed interest in a long-term gig there — while also noting that he’d be intrigued by the idea of running his own shop again.

He’d be a great fit anywhere, it took 4-5 years but Toronto had nothing on its roster, or in its farm when they hired him, taking over for J.P. Ricciardi. A series of bold and/ or blockbuster trades followed after building the farm up some, he kept the off-season exciting for fans for sure. His last trade deadline was probably one of the best deadline trade periods for a GM ever, IMO, although, I think he had an idea he wouldn’t be back. His best trade was the Vernon Wells deal to Anaheim, his worst…hmmm, some didn’t work out, but at the time, seemed like good deals, I think most fans would want the Dickey deal back. His absolute worst decision, hands down, hiring John Farrell, what a disaster that was. He couldn’t manage, was terrible with the media, just an awkward person, and then the exit to Boston.
One thing I feel was a weakness of AA was his drafting philosophy, they drafted a tonne of large framed right handed pitchers, not many seemed to pan out, but that’s drafting.

I didn’t mention the Donaldson deal as his best, of course Barreto hasn’t made the majors yet, but at the time of the Wells trade it really moved the club ahead getting out from under that contract. But I feel Donaldson is one of the top players the organization has ever had, I put him ahead of Alomar, at number one, once(and hopefully) he has some post season success and/or huge post season moments.

You did call it!! I still think Ben Cherington is a better fit. He seems to excel (based on his time in Boston) at building a team through the draft. He seemed to fail at signing big free agents. The Twins being a smaller market (and being choked by the Mauer contract) probably won’t be chasing the big names. Imo AA needs a bigger market to succeed. I have to say he did draft/sign a few highly rated young pitchers (although some haven’t really performed in the majors yet) Syndergard (sp?), Sanchez, Stroman, Hoffman, Boyd, and Norris all could turn out to be mid-rotation or better.
The Dickey trade hasn’t really panned out but he was the reigning Cy Young, so, I think he should get a pass there. Imo the Halladay trade was way worse. His best move would be a 3 way tie of signing Bautista, Donaldson, and unloading Wells while getting quality (Napoli) in return.

No love for Joe Carter? I know he wasn’t a Jay long but he will always be remembered as one.

He definitely overpaid for Dickey, but he really thought he was the final piece to a WS contender, so it’s at least understandable why he did, rather than just getting fleeced for no real reason. The rest of his track record was pretty solid overall and he only seemed to be getting better. His last offseason with the Jays set them up for the postseason, getting Donaldson, Travis, and Estrada, who gave them 13 WAR.

The Dickey deal was understandable. They were in a win-now mode, so you sacrifice some future for the now. Everyone focuses on Noah Syndergaard as the big loss, but at the point of the deal it was Travis d’Arnaud who was the more interesting get for the Mets. Syndergaard was a developing prospect, but he was mostly at the back end of the top 100 prospect lists at the point of the trade. He added velocity and moved up the lists after the Mets acquired him. It’s unknown if he’d have the same development path with the Blue Jays. The Mets have a history on this front.

In 2010 alone the Jays drafted Noah Syndergaard, Aaron Sanchez, Justin Nicolino and Sam Dyson.
Marcus Stroman, Dan Norris, Joe Musgrove and Jeff Hoffman are other high round picks over the last few years.
Anthony Descalfini, Matt Boyd and Kendall Graveman are all 6th round or lower picks that are pitching in the majors now.
He also went big and drafted Aaron Nola, Luke Weaver and Tyler Beede but couldn’t get them signed.

AA was excellent at drafting he just used a lot of his prospects in trades. Imagine If they still had Syndergaard to go with Sanchez now.

Whoever it is they need to have the caracas to deal with the coaching philosophy up and down the organization. Not sure what the average WHIP is in our minor league system but it needs to drop by at least 0.15-0.25 for the parent club to have any success..

Cherington fits the Twins organization better. AA was viewed as a bit of a lone wolf and someone not strong in the type of organizational development required for today’s game. His tenure from 2009 up until mid 2015 was viewed by many as spotty. It was the great second half in 2015 that is what people remember, but the decision to replace him was already in the works based on the nearly seven years prior. I’m not sure a three month hot run can gloss over what happened prior.

Ben Cherington would be a much better choice for an organization like the Twins. Cherington first shepherded the Red Sox to a World Series championship in 2013 by bringing in a several low-cost, high-performing free agents, all while in the process of rebuilding the Red Sox farm system. Under Cherington, they had one of the best draft-and-development organizations in the game, probably the best, which has brought up the core of young talent now fueling the Red Sox. His last top pick, Andrew Benintendi in 2015, serves in stark contrast to the issues the Twins have had with players like Buxton and Hicks. Benintendi was contributing at a high level in the majors within one year. The Twins are not a major market team, and they’ve been greatly hurt by both their drafting and development in recent years. Cherington is exactly the type of person they need leading their organization. He has shown he can build a great farm system, and identify lower cost, productive free agents. That’s exactly the model the Twins need for long-term success.

Agreed. I can’t think of a single GM (or PoBO for the new term) who hasn’t made seemingly bad decisions. Baseball talent is more difficult to assess than other sports. It’s the totality of moves that have to be looked at. AA has had his successes. From the outside looking in, I’m just more a fan of Cherington for the type or organization the Twins need to operate. Yet it’s unknown if Cherington is even a choice or available. I’m not sure he’s back on the market. AA would be a solid addition because he does bring an outside voice and a lot of experience.

I’m not downgrading Theo at all. I’m a fan and he deserves credit, just as Dan Duquette deserves quite a bit of credit for the Red Sox’s world championship in 2004. When there’s a cross-over in leadership, credit will be shared. Cherington was with the Red Sox for over 15 years, heavily involved in all aspects of drafting and development, including serving as head of player personnel and then SVP and AGM, and then of course GM. Those positions cover the time when all the current young stars were added to the system. He personally oversaw the 2011 draft as AGM, which is one of the strongest in recent memories. So no discredit to Theo, but anyone trying to remove what Cherington did for the Red Sox player development does not know the background. He is the single most important person on that front over the past 10 years, and is why he was eventually named GM.

My first response was the same as lordd. However my dad always said ‘do you have any idea how hard it is to ‘not’ mess things up?’ Although theo deserves credit for the process, the system and many of the draft picks, cherington does have 1 more ring that the Cubs have in the past 108 years.

Hats off to him for continuing to ‘swing big’, looking forward to seeing where he finally lands…

Answer: Billy Beane. He didn’t even shop Donaldson to the entire market. I’m not taking credit away from AA. He was relentless. That is known to be one of his skills, yet this was a Beane error. He miscalculated.

Josh didn’t really have much of a track record, he was a late bloomer, came up as a catcher, was struggling to be a major league player for a few years, there was some risk. Of course hindsight is well you know the rest.

Donaldson was traded by the A’s ’cause he told their upper management they did not want to spend the resources to put a competitive team on the field. They phoned Billy with the instructions. Donaldson was gone. Pure and simple.

Beane is a partial owner in the A’s too. He has more influence than other GMs with ownership because of that. While I won’t say that someone “above” Billy forced the deal, it doesn’t forgive that Beane didn’t shop Donaldson to all teams. I believe Beane decided who he wanted and then went forward with a deal, but he could have gotten more, and at the minimum increased his leverage if he had other bidders. Beane’s done a lot of good over the years, but this was not his finest moment. The Blue Jays and their fans thank him.

Anthopoulus or Cherington would be a good choice. Twins need someone from outside the organization and with some recent experience in building a team.
Someone who will be able to bring along the young talent we have and make the moves needed to bring in a top #1 and maybe #2 pitcher.

I know AA takes a lot of heat for some questionable moves but I think he’d be good for the Twins. He definitely left the Jays better off than he found them and only left there in the first place because of office politics. We can pick apart some of his moves but I think he can draft, and he has he fortitude to make big moves to win today when the chance is near – rather than getting so fixated on a mythical Team of Tomorrow that he couldn’t let promising prospects go to pick up superstars and make a WS run.